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British Human Rights Expert Expelled
British law professor and barrister Bill Bowring has been expelled from Russia. The University of London professor was delivering a cycle of lectures in Astrakhan. The reason for his expulsion was that he had come to Russia on a tourist visa, when a business visa was needed. Human rights activists suspect that his problems are a form of revenge by the Russian authorities.
Bowring as represented Russian citizens in the European Court of Human Rights and won Chechen claimants ˆ135,000 for actions by the Russian military. He also served as a witness in a hearing in Magistrate's Court in London on the YUKOS case.
Bowring, who is also founder and chairman of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, arrived in Astrakhan on Thursday to take part in a seminar organized by the Astrakhan Regional Court. He had read two out of his scheduled four lectures, when a check of his passport at the Victoria Palace Hotel, where he was staying, revealed that he had the wrong type of visa. The FSB has stated that the passport check was part of a regular procedure taking place in all hotels. A law enforcement source said that the professor “started to hint that we have a dictatorial regime and so on, so the decision was made to expel him.”
Bowring said that traveling on a tourist visa to take part in seminars is a usual practice. He did not say anything in his lectures that could offend the authorities. He intends to return to Astrakhan, since his visa was not annulled when he was expelled. Bowring was expelled from Russia directly from Sheremetyevo Airport in 2005 when he came to observe the trial of chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Russian-Chechen friendship society Stanislav Dmitrievsky.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 22, 2007
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